I guess you’re just my fatal attraction

The Challenge today is technology



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30 Day Photography Challenge – Technology

UPDATED: Summer exposes the Mirror of Erised.

There’s no question that I am a fan.

I love it that I can Skype with my friend in France or that we can join in the family holidays even when they’re in Chicago and we’re in Georgia.

I love that I can watch live music remotely.

It’s wonderful that people who would have died not so long ago can now live because of science and technology.

An aside – don’t you love it when people use technology to proclaim a disdain for science? Silly humans.

I’m glad that when a hurricane or a tornado or a blizzard is heading our way, we can now prepare for it.

I am still a little amazed that I can walk around with a roomful of milk crates jammed full with record albums and audio books in my pocket.

It’s pretty damn cool that my kids can watch movies and TV shows and read books on these little devices they hold in their hands.

I like that when I talk to my mother, I share with her the Rising Sun gossip and goings on because I’m on Facebook and she’s not.

I will never regret the worlds I’ve tapped into because of this infernal typing machine. (Love you guys!)

I love it that when my kids need me that they can reach me. And I’m pleased that they’ve done a good job of figuring out when it’s really important to call. Or text. They text when they don’t want a lecture.

I don’t exactly love it that MathMan can text me every time he pees, but it still makes me laugh.

The daily essentials.

A gratuitously edited shot.

My old friend. I miss you. And all the content that died with you.

I love that I can take a million photos and keep the best.

But all this comes at a price doesn’t it?

Technology is changing us.

And I’m not even talking about the ridiculous bitching that goes on when Facebook changes something or that people tweet about what they’re eating (me included!) or reality television or spammers who fill our inboxes with penis enlargement emails or that haters can more easily spread their hate and scammers can expand their reach or that I’m struggling to keep up – Google+, Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Blogger, WordPress, Klout, iTunes, Amazon, Goodreads, Pinterest, and who knows what else I’m forgetting or that when something doesn’t work right, people (read: me) lose their shit in the most appalling displays of crybaby hysterics or that we’re seriously fucking up the environment and all this technology won’t be able to save us from ourselves.

No, I’m talking about the fact that this technology creep, this influx of stuff is turning me into a charger hoarder.

Summer at Phoenix Berries is someone I know only through blogging, but over the years, I feel like I’ve gotten to know this incredibly intelligent, talented, and spiritual young woman. One of the beautiful things she shares with her readers is her children. I’ve watched Summer’s little family grow from three to four and it’s been a delight to see how she’s raising her young children in this changing world. Yesterday she told the story of how Pip got his name.

Randal gets very artsy and angers his muse.

Geoffrey reaches out and touches somebody.

Love/hate technology? Let us count the ways in comments.

Long Exposure

I’ve written a very short fiction at my other blog That’s Why. Remember, it’s fiction. I hope you’ll join me there.

30 Day Photography Challenge – Long Exposure

“Hey, when you take your shirts down from the closet, can you grab the hanger, too? Toss it on the bed or put it in the hamper. That way I don’t have to go hunting hangers when I’m in the basement doing laundry.” She turned and looked at him. His eyes were on his computer screen and he didn’t reply.

“Honey?”

He looked in her direction.

“Did you hear me?” She wiggled the hanger in her hand interrupting the heavy air between them.

He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Hangers in the hamper. Okay.”

“Thanks.”

*****************

Nothing changed in that regard. The hangers remained askew from where he’d yanked the shirt down in his rush to get out of the house. She’d sigh that annoying martyred sigh, reach up and pluck the hanger from its spot, often having to untangle it from its neighbors.

On her bad days, those hangers are the symbol of one more thing she does for people who could do such things for themselves. She knows this because there was once a time when she, too, rushed out the door to get on with her day and the hangers made their way to the laundry room without her morning hike around the house.

On her good days, she’d remember that those hangers never made it to the laundry room unless she reminded him and the children to bring them down. Or, as was often the case, she spent her evenings after work and weekends going from room to room retrieving them and resenting the fact that despite of her job and long commute, she bore most of the domestic duties, as well.

Also on her good days, she’d remind herself that he was busy. Always working. Away from the house and at home. She’d recently joked (okay it wasn’t so much a joke) that with the hours he put in planning and grading and answering emails and all the other things a teacher does, his hourly wage was probably hovering near minimum wage.

All their married lives they’d struggled for balance between them – who was giving enough, who was giving too much, who wasn’t paying attention, who was using work as an escape, who was looking out instead of in. These last two years had been a real test of their ability to adjust the scales.

So what was it about the hangers that lit the pilot of her ire?

********************

“Where’s the hanger for my jacket?”

One simple sentence. A legitimate question asked by a reasonable man who just wanted to hang up his hoodie now that the day was warming. At other points in their twenty-three year marriage, she would have been thrilled that he even thought to hang it up.

“I must have taken it when I collected them to take downstairs. I’m sorry.”

He stood holding his jacket and frowning. “I just wanted to hang this up.”

“I’m sorry. Put it on the chair and I’ll bring up a hanger in a little while.” Unbelievable. He was pissed at her for keeping the wheels of domestic order in forward motion? Did he think all this shit got done by magic? She’d asked him more than once (and yes, that matters when you’re keeping score) to deal with those fucking hangers at the time he took his shirts out of the closet and he’d either forgotten or refused (which would not be unlike him to spite her in a little way like that!) and now he was bitching about not having a hanger.

He repeated his grievance. “You know, I just want one hanger.”

“I’m sorry. I said I’d take care of it!”

These words got said over and over, louder and louder until she left the room, slamming the door behind her.

********************

Monday morning came and everyone with somewhere to go raced out the door or, in the case of some of them, dragged themselves out. She wandered the house, picking up things that had been discarded without a thought as to where they belonged, making beds, tidying this and that. The closet door stood open and there hung an empty hanger slightly askew. She reached up to take it then stopped.

UPDATED: Geoffrey has a different and essential perspective.
Randal is not Armin Tanzarian, but you might remember him from such blockbuster films as Librarians Go Wild.

30 Day Photography Challenge – Silhouette

First things first: A lot of you will relate to Summer and her 13 things.  Randal’s 13 things better not topple over on him or his eye.

UPDATED: Geoffrey is rescued by a cat.

UPDATED Encore: We could call Summer Hazel.

Today I’m supposed to give you a silhouette so I walked around the house camera in hand and determined not to point the dang thing at myself again.

I dicked around with a few things, but it felt pointless because the image stuck in my head when I think silhouette is this one that graces The Storialist’s Facebook page.

Now this is what I think about when I think silhouette. Delicate, a beautiful cameo. And if you haven’t read Hannah’s poetry, you’re in for a treat.

************************

There’s an unemployment diary post at my other blog. I’m feeling a bit raw and ready to nutpunch someone.

Unemployment Diary: Hallmark’s Cards for the Unemployed

Echoes here, doesn’t it?

I’ve been trying to come up with a post, but the news is so bad, the brainpan so desolate, I can’t think of what to say. The depression or The Depression?

MathMan showed me an article that made me want to nutpunch somebody. An irrational response, but there it is. My reaction was visceral. What, you may wonder, could upset me so?

Hallmark has launched a series of cards offering – – what? condolences for a career? get well from your unemployment spurred depression? watch your savings go Over the Hill? — yeah, Hallmark now makes a card you can run out and purchase when your friends and assorted accomplices lose their jobs.

Swell, huh?

I think it’s charming how the people in the HuffPo article who support the idea have jobs or will be hawking the damn things. Sure, sure, Hallmark is responding to consumer need out of the goodness of their hearts. In that case, they should be giving them away.

Do I sound bitter? I know I do. After 21 months without a job and having only had three interviews in that time, I’m back to bitter. I’ve already cycled through all the other fucking emotions. There are millions just like me out there. And by out there, I mean your friends, your neighbors, the guy biting his nails to the quick as he watches the dollars rack up as he pumps his gas. And the longer we go without a job, the harder it’s getting to find a job.

Listen, if you ever make the tremendous mistake of sending one of these cards, please be sure to include a check, some cash or a prepaid credit card. Because your friends don’t need another piece of paper to remind them that times are about to get even tougher. They need help. If you can’t give them a job, give them something that will help them no matter how temporarily. Ten minutes of not worrying about how you’re going to pay your bills is ten minutes less than you would be worrying.

And when you’re in this situation, any time not worrying about money or bills or finding a job or what assholes say about the unemployed is a good time.

30 Day Photography Challenge – Eyes

If the eyes are the window to the soul, then what do you suppose these eyes are saying?

Randal turns up the pretty on Cleveland.

UPDATED: Geoffrey is being watched.

30 Day Photography Challenge – 13 Things

First I took a photo of myself with thirteen books that meant something to me.

Okay now that I got that out of the way, here’s one where you can actually see the books and not simply the narcissist with the camera and a mad penchant for photo editing.

1. Steven King’s On Writing given to me by Lola Sharp.

2. The 3 a.m. Epiphany by Brian Kiteley, a gift from Kirie.

3. Trouble De Ville by Steve Denton who has also published the graphic novel Hip Deep Mountain High.

4. Do Not Disturb – Hotel Sex Stories, edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel. My friend Lillian Ann Slugocki has a deliciously erotic story included.

5. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. One of my favorite stories ever.

6. The Adderall Diaries by Stephen Elliott. Writer’s crush does not even begin to describe it.

7. Betsy Lerner’s The Forest for the Trees. This book and Betsy’s blog opened up a whole new world of friends to me and I’m forever grateful.

8. The Pat Hobby Stories by F.Scott Fitzgerald. I can still see myself reading these as I munched a turkey on rye with lettuce, tomato and mayo in the cafeteria of the Rotary International building in Evanston, Illinois. Back then it never would have occurred to me that I would take an active interest in the writing of screenplays and scripts.

9. Elizabeth Berg’s Say When. It’s the first of Berg’s books I read. I have quite the collection now. 

10. The Art of Table Dancing by DC Stanfa. Pee your pants funny. DC does things I only wish I had the gonads to do.

11. The Preacher’s Bride by Jody Hedlund. As a sore-headed agnostic, I am clearly not the target market for this book, but I was lucky enough to win this from Jody’s blog and by page three, was a fan. Between topnotch research and wonderful prose, Jody writes the kind of historical fiction that has broad appeal.

12. The New Bedside, Bathtub and Armchair Companion to Agatha Christie. It’s full of detail about the novels and the movies. And Christie’s relationship with her characters.

13. Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America. I love Roth’s novels. This one knocked my sandals off.

And then I had an email exchange with Randal who gave me an idea. He asked if I’d be photographed with thirteen bags of kitty litter? While that would have mass appeal, I’m sure, I don’t have thirteen bags of litter hanging around. (I wish!) I thought about other items I could photograph myself with, but ended up dismissing them mostly because I didn’t have 13 of this or that.

1. Thirteen cats. (We’re six short and I intend to keep it that way.)
2. Thirteen sex toys. (Where would I hide that many?)
3. Thirteen clean towels. (It is to dream.)
4. Thirteen whistles. (I wish I had thirteen whistles!)
5. Thirteen vintage cars. (Alas I am not Jay Leno.)
6. Thirteen jars of olives. (Not even on my best stockpiling trips did I snag that many jars of olives!)
7. A baker’s dozen of donuts. (Come one, like they’d survive past the first photo intact?)

Having hit all those brick walls, I went with this which I fondly call The Writer’s Life. The sound I was making was like a cross between the yowling the cats make when I don’t feed them fast enough and Fran Drescher’s laugh.

Geoffrey makes glorious sounds. Please go and tell him that his butt looks fine.
Summer offers swoon worthy sunsets. SWOONWORTHY.

30 Day Photography Challenge – Sunset

The scattered tea goes with the leaves and every day a sunset dies.
 – William Faulkner (source) 

Sunset, May 4, 2010

Geoffrey and the Prairie Sunset captured by C3PO.
Randal delights us with blue prose. I mean prose about the color bleu.With bonus poetry.

Last night I sat on the deck and watched the sunset turn the sky a baby chick yellow until it faded to a pale buttery light behind the backdrop of the tall pines that stand guard over our back lawn. Somewhere in that moment I thought I should take a photo for the day when sunset is the subject for this 30 Day Photography project. I took another look, closed my eyes to capture the imprint then picked up the book I’m reading – The Egg and I  by Betty MacDonald – and continued to read and guffaw until I snorted red wine through my nose.

Silly me. Today the subject is sunset. Thank goodness for all the photos I have stored over the years (years now?) at Facebook (Flickr won’t let me have all my old photos until I pay up my pro fee). There’s a cautionary tale here about how we make decisions about our intellectual and artistic property and content vis a vis technology, but damned if I can suss it out. It’s Sunday, I’m still feeling like muck and just want to get back to that book. Betty MacDonald is hysterically funny in an Aunt Betty kind of way. And if you’re related to me, you know what that means. And maybe you do even if you aren’t.

Not that I don’t love you for being here. You know I do.

30 Day Photography Challenge – Blue

Peacock. Indigo. Cerulean. Light. Sky. Prussian. Sapphire. Azure. Federal. Baby. Columbia. Cobalt. Falcon. Electric. Powder. Cornflower. Egyptian. Royal. Ultramarine. Oxford.Turquoise. Brandeis. Steel. Persian. Eton. Teal. Navy. Cyan. Tiffany. Teal. Denim. Air Force. Maya. And true.

These beauties.

 From Lunatique.

They are so gorgeous and delicate. Thank you, Cindy!

Geoffrey asks the question….

and I answer his question with a question.

Or this because I cannot decide which version I like better.

On the other hand, Randal has candy colored memories.

And Summer has the man of her dreams.  And makes childhood memories.

What do you think, what do you feel when you see blue?